Toledot ha-Emunah ha-Yisra'elit: The Uniqueness of Israelite Religion

Kaufmann’s second masterwork, “The History of Israelite Religion (1937–1956)”, argues that Israelite monotheism was a radical break from paganism, rather than a development out of it. This lecture presents Kaufmann’s fundamental thesis regarding pagan religion and his bold challenge to the dominant Wellhausian tradition of biblical scholarship, including his controversial reversal of the chronology of Pentateuchal sources. The discussion further examines his account of prophecy and the work’s polemical dimension, specifically Kaufmann’s explicit challenge to the Christian theological assumptions that he believed had distorted modern biblical scholarship from its foundations.